Roger Corman’s THE HAUNTED PALACE was marketed as “Edgar Allan Poe’s The Haunted Palace” but is actually derived from the plot of H.P. Lovecraft’s “The Case of Charles Dexter Ward.” It stars Vincent Price, as it should.
Condemned warlock Joseph Curwen curses a New England village just before being burned alive. All of them witches! More than a century later, Curwen’s kindly great-great grandson Charles Ward arrives in town and moves into Curwen’s old mansion. Caretaker Simon Orne helps Charles and his wife Ann adjust to their new home but the ancient curse, however, soon takes hold of Joseph, awakening inside him a long-dormant evil passed on through blood.
Starring: Jeffrey Combs, Barbara Crampton, Ted Sorel, Ken Foree
Co-presented by Brooklyn Horror Society.
Obsessive scientist Dr. Pretorius (Bride of Frankenstein reference alert) successfully discovers a way to access a parallel universe of pleasure by tapping into the brain’s pineal gland. When he is seemingly killed by forces from this other dimension, his assistant, Dr. Crawford Tillinghast, is accused of the murder. After psychiatrist Katherine McMichaels and detective Bubba Brownlee take the case, the trio risks a return to the other world in order to solve the mystery.
A portion of proceeds from ticket sales will be donated to the Heidi Paoli Fund.
Brooklyn Horror Society is a community created to celebrate all things horror. With events ranging from classic movie screenings to horror trivia to screenings for local indie directors, we’ve got something for the diehard gore hounds, the nervous horror-curious, and everyone in between.
2016’s THE VOID is pure Lovecraftian: grotesque monsters, hospitals, the gateway to hell and the unknown space of the void.
When police officer Carter discovers a blood-soaked man limping down a deserted road, he rushes him to a local hospital with a barebones, night shift staff. As cloaked, cult-like figures surround the building, the patients and staff inside start to turn ravenously insane. Trying to protect the survivors, Carter leads them into the depths of the hospital where they discover a gateway to immense evil.
In the throes of a zombie apocalypse, Molly – a troubled woman from Las Vegas with a dark past – finds herself stranded in the desert with a lone ravenous zombie on her tail. At first, she’s easily able to outpace her undead pursuer, but things quickly become a nightmare when she realizes the zombie doesn’t need to ever stop and rest. Running low on supplies and beat down by the harsh environment, Molly will have to summon the strength she never knew she had to ultimately face both the zombie and the demons that have chased her all her life.
In this tale of a killer canine, man’s best friend turns into his worst enemy. When sweet St. Bernard Cujo is bitten by a bat, he starts behaving oddly and becomes very aggressive. As Cujo morphs into a dangerous beast, he goes on a rampage in a small town. Stay-at-home mom Donna (Dee Wallace) gets caught in Cujo’s crosshairs on a fateful errand with her son, Tad (Danny Pintauro). Stuck in their tiny car, Donna and Tad have a frightening showdown with the crazed animal.
Starring: Aaron Stanford, Kathleen Quinlan, Vinessa Shaw, Emilie de Ravin, Dan Byrd, Tom Bower
With a pounding soundtrack and gore-galore, The Hills Have Eyes is about as subtle as a blow to the skull. The carnage begins immediately as a hazmat wearing group measuring radiation in the desert are besieged by the local mutants, with the following opening credits juxtaposing archival footage of nuclear blasts with a variety of deformities. When we meet the Carter family, road tripping to California, they aren’t the soft type – they carry guns and have German Shepherds – yet they are no match for the trap set by the amoral hill-dwellers.
Intrigued by the success of other remakes, Wes Craven tapped filmmaking team Alexandre Aja and Grégory Levasseur, impressed by their French Extremity High Tension, to redo his 1977 film. They effectively ramp up the grotesquery and add their own touches, including a haunting sequence in an abandoned nuclear test site eerily populated with mannequins. This movie pulls no punches and is not for the easily queasy.
Matt Reeves’ (Cloverfield, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes) remake of ice-cold vampire cult favorite Let The Right One In closely adheres to what worked in the Swedish original. A story of a bullied boy who befriends the young girl who moves in next door, but with a twist. This girl isn’t so young, but actually a vampire out to recruit a new assistant in her quest for blood.
Note: This screening has been changed from 35mm to a DCP
Starring: Sarah Polley, Ving Rhames, Jake Weber, Mekhi Phifer, Ty Burrell, Michael Kelly
Before he broke big with his tricky comic book adaptations, director Zack Snyder (300, Watchmen, Man of Steel, Army of the Dead) took on the thankless challenge of remaking one of the most highly regarded horror films of all time: George A. Romero’s Dawn of the Dead.
The most audacious thing about Snyder’s aughtsie spin on Romero’s strangers-ride-out-the-zombie-apocalypse-in-a-mall original is just how good it is: tight, high-stress undead mayhem that captures how quickly everything can fall apart, and just how nasty it gets if you survive the fallout.
When the owner of a liquor store starts selling 60 year old bad/cheap wine to the local hobos, they literally start melting to death. An overzealous cop tries to get to the bottom of all these strange deaths while also dealing with a deranged Vietnam vet. Street Trash is the kind of ridiculous, gross-out midnight fair you can enjoy regardless of where you live, but the film holds a special place in our hearts here at Nitehawk because much of it was filmed right up the road in Greenpoint in mid-1980’s, capturing the neighborhood before the wave of cultural and economic changes swept through the neighborhood, taking much of Street Trash’s trash with it.
Beneath Modern London Lives a Tribe of Once Humans. Neither Men nor Women… They are the Raw Meat of the Human Race! When a prominent politician and a beautiful young woman vanish inside a London subway station, Scotland Yard’s Inspector Calhoun (Donald Pleasence of HALLOWEEN) investigates and makes a horrifying discovery. Not only did a group of 19th century tunnel workers survive a cave-in, but they lived for years in a secret underground enclave by consuming the flesh of their own dead. Now the lone descendant of this grisly tribe has surfaced, prowling the streets for fresh victims…and a new mate.
Norman Rossington (A HARD DAY’S NIGHT), David Ladd (THE WILD GEESE), Sharon Gurney (CRUCIBLE OF HORROR), and the legendary Christopher Lee (HORROR OF DRACULA) also star in this heart-stopping horror classic co-written and directed by Gary Sherman (DEAD & BURIED). Originally recut and released as RAW MEAT in the United States, now DEATH LINE has been freshly transferred and fully restored in 2K from the original uncensored camera negative
